Erich Ludwig Loewenthal

Erich Ludwig Loewenthal (born 16th March 1894 in Berlin , died probably 13. March 1943 in the Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a Jewish German Neuphilologe , literary scholar , teacher and editor and a victim of the Holocaust .

Life

Origin, education and profession

Erich Loewenthal was born on March 16, 1894, the first of four children to Jewish parents, the businessman Adolf Loewenthal and his wife Flora, née Seidenberg ( Breslau 1868–1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto ), in Berlin. From 1903 until his Abitur in 1912 he attended the Königstädtische Gymnasium in Berlin. In the high school year Loewenthal began studying German, Romance and Classical Philology as well as philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin.

High school graduate Erich Loewenthal in the 1912/13 school year report of the Königstädtisches Gymnasium in Berlin.

Erich Loewenthal's edition of Heinrich Heine's Rabbi von Bacherach with the addition, which was obligatory for the Schocken library from August 1, 1937,: Jewish book publisher .

Due to the war, he had to interrupt his studies in 1915 and served until the end of the war in 1918 as a military interpreter at the command offices of the prisoner-of-war camps in Celle (Cellelager) and Soltau . Loewenthal completed his resumed studies at Berlin University with the dissertation Studies on Heine's 'Travel Pictures' and the doctorate to Dr. phil. 1920 from. The PhD philologist decided against an academic career, became a trainee lawyer at the Bismarck-Gymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1920 and a study assistant at the Fichte-Realschule in Berlin-Schöneberg in 1921 . Between 1921 and 1925 Loewenthal worked as a part-time editor for the Hoffmann und Campe publishing house . In 1924 Loewenthal moved to the Kirschner School (Oberrealschule and Reformrealgymnasium) in Berlin-Moabit , where he was appointed to the faculty in 1929. He taught at this school until the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Teacher at a private Jewish school, editor at Lambert Schneider

On the basis of the law passed on April 7, 1933 to restore the professional civil service , with which the National Socialists a. a. created the formal legal basis for the dismissal of Jewish university teachers, teachers and headmasters, Loewenthal was "retired" on November 30, 1933 and "removed" from the public school service. From Easter 1934 he found another job as a teacher at the private Jewish forest school Grunewald ( Toni Lessler ), Hagenstr. 56, in Berlin-Grunewald , where he worked until it was closed in 1939. Loewenthal, who had long shown himself to be an expert on Heine with his dissertation, two volumes he edited in 1925 with Heine's literary estate and in Germanistic journals, got to know the Berlin publisher Lambert Schneider during this time , his friend and closest colleague (scientific advisory board) he was. Loewenthal's first task was to record bibliographically the scientific handset of the Marburg Heine editor Prof. Ernst Elster that had come to Lambert Schneider . At Schocken Verlag , founded in 1931 and whose managing director Lambert Schneider had become, Loewenthal's edition of Heine's fragment of the novel Der Rabbi von Bacherach was published in 1937 as the 80th volume of the Schocken library , with an afterword by the editor and illustrated with drawings by Ludwig Schwerin . After the Schocken Verlag was liquidated as a result of the November pogroms, the classic editions edited by Erich Loewenthal, but without naming the publisher, were published by Verlag Lambert Schneider between 1939 and 1942. a. the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries (1939/40), the Comedies of Aristophanes (1940) and all of Plato's dialogues (1940), which significantly shaped the publisher's program over the next 50 years.

Forced labor, deportation and death

Loewenthal, whose efforts to emigrate had failed, lived with his mother during these years of increasing disenfranchisement, isolation and persecution of Berlin Jews - she was deported to Theresienstadt on March 17, 1943, where she died on March 31, 1943 - and his sister Erna until 1941 in Berlin-Charlottenburg , Küstriner Str. 14 (today Damaschkestr. 32) and then in a so-called Judenhaus , Waitzstr. 7, which became the site of secret working meetings with its publisher. On the instructions of the Gestapo , brokered and paid for by the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , Loewenthal was used for forced labor from November 3, 1941. Together with initially seven, later in a contingent of up to 25 Jewish forced laborers in Ernst Grumach's group , Loewenthal worked in the "Jewish library", which was made up of stolen Jewish book holdings and was to be cataloged and set up as part of the "Central Library". in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Office VII, Eisenacherstr. 12. On March 12, 1943, Loewenthal was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on the 36th so-called “Osttransport” . Of the 964 Jews who arrived in Auschwitz on March 13th in this RSHA transport from Berlin, only 218 men and 147 women were registered as "fit for work" prisoners and assigned to the camp after the selection at the "Alte Rampe". As far as we know, Erich Loewenthal was no longer registered as a prisoner in Birkenau and was probably murdered in the gas chamber immediately upon arrival on March 13, 1943; just like his sister Erna Loewenthal, who came to Auschwitz on the same transport. On the transmitted “incoming message ” ( radio message ) to the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, the head of the Labor Deployment Department in Auschwitz, SS Obersturmführer Heinrich Schwarz , formulated the perpetrators in the disguised jargon : “KL Auschwitz reports the transport of Jews from Berlin. Receipt on 3/13/43. Total number 964 Jews. 218 men and 147 women came to work. (...). 126 men u. 473 women u. Children accommodated. "

On April 26, 2013 it happened in Damaschkestr. 32 in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg for laying a stumbling block for Flora, Erna and Erich Ludwig Loewenthal.

Stumbling blocks for Erna, Erich and Flora Loewenthal - Damaschkestr. 32, Berlin.

Fonts

• Erich Loewenthal: Studies on Heine's "travel pictures" (= Palaestra 138). Mayer and Müller, Berlin / Leipzig 1922.
• Heinrich Heine : The lyrical estate of Heinrich Heine. Viewed by Erich Loewenthal (= works in individual editions and pictures from his time, volume 11). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg / Berlin 1925.
• Heinrich Heine: The prose estate of Heinrich Heine. Rearranged, viewed and introduced by Erich Loewenthal (= works in individual editions and pictures from his time, volume 12). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg / Berlin 1925.
• Heinrich Heine: The Rabbi von Bacherach. A fragment. With drawings by Ludwig Schwerin. With Heine's corresponding letters and an afterword by Erich Loewenthal. Schocken, Berlin 1937.
• William Shakespeare : Dramatic Works. Translated by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. 3 vol. Ed. V. Erich Loewenthal. Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1939.
• Aristophanes : The Comedies. Translated and explained by Ludwig Seeger. 2 vol. Ed. V. Erich Loewenthal. Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1940.
• Plato : Complete Works. German by Friedrich Schleiermacher , Franz Susemihl a. a. 3 vol. Ed. V. Erich Loewenthal. Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1940, ²1942.
• Shakespeare's contemporaries . 2 vol. Ed. V. Erich Loewenthal and Lambert Schneider. Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1940.
• Italian short stories. 3 vol. Ed. V. Erich Loewenthal. Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1942.
• Sturm und Drang - Critical Writings. Plan and selection by Erich Loewenthal. Posthumous ed. v. Lambert Schneider. Lambert Schneider Heidelberg 1949.
• Sturm und Drang - Dramatic Writings. Plan and selection by Erich Loewenthal. Posthumous ed. v. Lambert Schneider. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1959.

literature

• Lambert Schneider: An account of forty years of publishing work 1925–1965. An almanac. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1965; here: Erich Loewenthal , pp. 55–57.
• Olaf Hildebrand: Erich Ludwig Loewenthal. In: Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 . Volume 2: H-Q. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , pp. 1109-1110.
• Loewenthal, Erich Ludwig. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 16: Lewi – Mehr. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-22696-0 , pp. 139-142.
• Altenheim, Hans: Lambert Schneider and his publishers. In: From the Antiquarian Bookshop , New Series 8, No. 3/4, pp. 128–141. Frankfurt am Main 2010, here: p. 132.
• Loewenthal, Erich. In: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 246.

Web links

Commons : Erich Ludwig Loewenthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Personal form from Erich Ludwig Loewenthal in the personnel file of the BIL reviewer in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)
• Entries in the memorial book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933-1945 , Bundesarchiv Berlin. , see. also Flora Loewenthal and Erna Loewenthal .
• Entry in the International Lexicon of German Studies 1800-1950 , Volume 2 (HQ). Berlin 2003.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The dissertation was published slightly revised: Erich Loewenthal: Studies on Heine's “travel pictures” (= Palaestra 138), Berlin and Leipzig, Mayer and Müller 1922.
2. ↑ On Loewenthal's teaching career up to 1933 at the various Berlin schools: cf. the surviving "Personalblatt A (Höhere Lehranstalten)" from EL Loewenthal, Library for Research on Educational History, Berlin. (Digitized version ) ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Cf. on this: Friedrich Wißmann / Ursula Blömer (eds.): "It has become fashionable to send children to Lessler school". Documents on Toni Lessler's private forest school in Berlin Grunewald , Oldenburg, BIS Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg 2010.
4. ↑ Cf. in the online project Statistics of the Holocaust , here Flora Loewenthal on the transport list of the "4th Great Age Transport" of 1342 people to Theresienstadt.
5. ↑ On this, cf. the letter from the RSHA, Amt VII, to Amt IV, B 4 ( Adolf Eichmann ) of October 14, 1941, in which Loewenthal is named as the eighth of the Jewish “librarians” designated as “useful for the local work” becomes; in: Dov Schidorsky: Confiscation of Libraries and Assignments to Forced Labor. Two Documents of the Holocaust. In: Libraries & Culture 33, 1998, pp. 347-388, here pp. 382 f. ( online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )  
6. ↑ Cf. in the online project Statistics of the Holocaust , here digitized of the transport list with Erich Ludwig and Erna Loewenthal
7. ↑ Cf. Danuta Czech: Calendar of events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939-1945 , Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, p. 440.
8. ↑ See the copy of the radio message protocol to the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office in: Andreas Engwert and Susanne Kill: Sonderzüge in den Tod. The deportations with the Deutsche Reichsbahn , Cologne / Weimar / Vienna, Böhlau Verlag 2009, p. 104.